In “The New Old Age,” the New York Times (8/23, Span) reports that certain behaviors, such as “overlooking a couple of credit card payments or habitually braking while driving,” may indicate “pathologies underlying brain decline” that “can begin years before symptoms” of dementia emerge. For example, one study published online June 14 in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy that “enrolled 64 older adults with preclinical Alzheimer’s, as determined by spinal taps (the results were not shared with participants), and 75 who were deemed cognitively normal,” revealed that “driving behavior and age could predict preclinical Alzheimer’s 88 percent of the time.” Likewise, a study published last November in JAMA Internal Medicine that analyzed “medical records and consumer credit reports for more than 80,000 Medicare beneficiaries showed that seniors who eventually received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease were significantly more likely to have delinquent credit card payments than those who were demographically similar but never received such diagnoses,” and were also “more likely to have subprime credit scores.” (SOURCE: APA Headlines)